READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Urban farming
In Paris, urban farmers are trying a soil-free approach to agriculture that uses less space and fewer
resources. Could it help cities face the threats to our food supplies?

On top of a striking new exhibition hall in southern Paris, the world’s largest urban rooftop farm has
started to bear fruit. Strawberries that are small, intensely flavoured and resplendently red sprout
abundantly from large plastic tubes. Peer inside and you see the tubes are completely hollow, the roots
of dozens of strawberry plants dangling down inside them. From identical vertical tubes nearby burst
row upon row of lettuces; near those are aromatic herbs, such as basil, sage and peppermint. Opposite,
in narrow, horizontal trays packed not with soil but with coconut fibre, grow cherry tomatoes, shiny
aubergines and brightly coloured chards.

Pascal Hardy, an engineer and sustainable development consultant, began experimenting with vertical
farming and aeroponic growing towers- as the soil-free plastic tubes are known – on his Paris apartment
block roof five years ago. The urban rooftop space above the exhibition hall is somewhat bigger: 14,000
square metres and almost exactly the size of a couple of football pitches. Already, the team of young
urban farmers who tend it have picked, in one day, 3,000 lettuces and 150 punnets of strawberries.
When the remaining two thirds of the vast open area are in production, 20 staff will harvest up to 1,000
kg of perhaps 35 different varieties of fruit and vegetables, every day. ‘We’re not ever, obviously, going
to feed the whole city this way,’ cautions Hardy. ‘In the urban environment you’re working with very
significant practical constraints, clearly, on what you can do and where. But if enough unused space can
be developed like this, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t eventually target maybe between 5% and
10% of consumption.’

Perhaps most significantly, however, this is a real-life showcase for the work of Hardy’s flourishing urban
agriculture consultancy, Agripolis, which is currently fielding enquiries from around the world to design,
build and equip a new breed of soil-free inner-city farm. ‘The method’s advantages are many,’ he says.
‘First, I don’t much like the fact that most of the fruit and vegetables we eat have been treated with
something like 17 different pesticides, or that the intensive farming techniques that produced them are
such huge generators of greenhouse gases. I don’t much like the fact, either, that they’ve travelled an
average of 2,000 refrigerated kilometres to my plate, that their quality is so poor, because the varieties
are selected for their capacity to withstand such substantial journeys, or that 80% of the price I pay goes
to wholesalers and transport companies, not the producers.’

Produce grown using this soil-free method, on the other hand- which relies solely on a small quantity of
water, enriched with organic nutrients, pumped around a closed circuit of pipes, towers and trays- is
‘produced up here, and sold locally, just down there. It barely travels at all,’ Hardy says. ‘You can select
crop varieties for their flavour, not their resistance to the transport and storage chain, and you can pick
them when they’re really at their best, and not before.’ No soil is exhausted, and the water that gently
showers the plants’ roots every 12 minutes is recycled, so the method uses 90% less water than a classic
intensive farm for the same yield.
Urban farming is not, of course, a new phenomenon. Inner-city agriculture is booming from Shanghai to
Detroit and Tokyo to Bangkok. Strawberries are being grown in disused shipping containers, mushrooms
in underground carparks. Aeroponic farming, he says, is ‘virtuous’. The equipment weighs little, can be
installed on almost any flat surface and is cheap to buy: roughly 100 to 150 per square metre. It is cheap
to run, too, consuming a tiny fraction of the electricity used by some techniques.

Produce grown this way typically sells at prices that, while generally higher than those of classic
intensive agriculture, are lower than soil-based organic growers. There are limits to what farmers can
grow this way, of course, and much of the produce is suited to the summer months. ‘Root vegetables we
cannot do, at least not yet,’ he says. ‘Radishes are OK, but carrots, potatoes, that kind of thing- the roots
are simply too long. Fruit trees are obviously not an option. And beans tend to take up a lot of space for
not much return.’ Nevertheless, urban farming of the kind being practised in Paris is one part of a bigger
and fast-changing picture that is bringing food production closer to our lives.

Questions 1-3

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS ANDIOR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

Urban farming in Paris

1 Vertical tubes are used to grow strawberries, …………………… and herbs.

2 There will eventually be a daily harvest of as much as …………………… in weight of fruit and vegetables.

3 It may be possible that the farm’s produce will account for as much as 10% of the city’s ……………………
overall.
Questions 4-7

Complete the table below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 4-7 on your
answer sheet.

Intensive farming versus aeroponic urban farming

Growth Selection Sale

● quality not good

● wide range
● varieties of fruit ● 6……………
Intensive of 4…………… used
and vegetables receive very little
farming ● techniques chosen that can of overall income
pollute air survive
long 5……………

● no soil used
Aeroponic ● produce chosen
urban ● nutrients added because of
farming to water, which is its 7……………
recycled

Questions 8-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

8 Urban farming can take place above or below ground.

9 Some of the equipment used in aeroponic farming can be made by hand.

10 Urban farming relies more on electricity than some other types of farming.

11 Fruit and vegetables grown on an aeroponic urban farm are cheaper than traditionally grown
organic produce.

12 Most produce can be grown on an aeroponic urban farm at any time of the year.

13 Beans take longer to grow on an urban farm than other vegetables.

LISTENING

Questions 1-6

Complete the notes.

Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer.

School Excursion

Day: Wednesday (Example)

Destination: 1…………….

Weather: 2…………….

Arrival time: 3…………….

Activities Planned

See: 4…………….

Eat: Catered lunch

Attend: 5…………….

Return time: 6…………….

Questions 7-10

Complete the table.

Write ONE WORD ONLY for each answer.

Nationality %

7……………. 26

8……………. 25

9……………. 16

Indonesian 15

10……………. 8

Saudi 7

Other 3
SECTION 2

Questions 11 – 15

Choose the correct letter, A, B, or C.

11 The company deals mostly with:

A Big cities.

B Nature holidays.

C Nepal.

12 The overseas consultants deal mostly with:

A Asia.

B North America.

C Europe.

13 For deserts and gorges, customers should come in the:

A Morning.

B Afternoon.

C Night.

14 Trips to regional locations are good because:

A The buses are comfortable.

B There is storage for suitcases.

C They can be seen quickly.

15 SleekLine buses are particularly known for their:

A Service.

B Size.

C Comfort.
Questions 16-20

Identify the rooms in the office plan.

Write the correct letter, A-G, next to the questions.

16 Local Tours

17 Interstate Tours

18 International Tours

19 Asian Region

20 General Office
Writing

Nowadays there are many young people studying abroad. In your opinion, what are advantages and
disadvantages of this trend?

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